Discoveries and new directions
College of health Solutions Innovation Talks are brought to you by the Design and Innovation Studio for Health (DISH) team. These talks highlight discoveries and new directions within and across the focal areas, centers and cores, and emerging initiatives of the College of Health Solutions.
Children exposed to economic adversity in the early years of life show increased susceptibility to chronic diseases of aging, like heart disease, when they reach their 50's and 60's. These findings raise challenging but fascinating mechanistic questions: How does early adversity "get under the skin" in a manner that is sufficiently persistent to affect vulnerability to diseases that arise many decades later? Why are some children vulnerable to these risks, whereas others are protected? In this lecture I will discuss three emerging themes from our ongoing research. First, this work suggests that early adversity gets embedded in cells of the innate immune system, instantiating a pro-inflammatory phenotype that probably contributes to the chronic diseases of aging. Second, we are seeing evidence that this phenotype arises as a result of excessive crosstalk between the innate immune system and brain circuitries involved in threat and reward processing. Finally, research on moderators has revealed powerful buffering effects of nurturant parenting, which offsets many of the risks associated with early adversity.
No-host Happy Hour with hors d'oeuvres provided to follow at Thunderbird Pub.
The Public’s Health: Fixing What Ails Us
Public health in the United States is in crisis. Public health institutions are chronically underfunded and increasingly mistrusted by the very public they are trying to serve. In the face of worsening health outcomes and health disparities, what solutions and innovations might resolve these ongoing challenges? This talk will identify ways that the American Public Health Association’s Public Health Code of Ethics can be leveraged to foster fundamental change in the field. Yudell will explore recommendations from his January 2024 Health Affairs Forefront article, including building trust with communities disenfranchised from public health, building confidence in our field by embracing new technologies while avoiding reductionist approaches, and treating our field as the highly political endeavor that it is.
Michael Yudell, PhD, MPH
Methods for exploring prostate cancer risk due to multiple causes and longitudinal biomarkers in the presence of unknown causes
In medical studies, we are often interested in quantifying the risk of diseases such as prostate cancer due to multiple causes with potential biomarkers are collected longitudinally. Dr. Sheikh will discuss how standard statistical tools can lead to misleading inferences in such complex analyses. In this talk, Dr. Sheikh will introduce novel methods that address these challenges by incorporating longitudinal biomarkers, such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA), while accounting for unknown causes of disease. These advances improve the accuracy of prostate cancer modeling, offering enhanced tools for early detection and risk prediction, with important clinical and public health implications. The talk will conclude with a discussion on interdisciplinary collaboration and integrating high-dimensional data, like lipidomic profiles and mortality records, to broaden risk assessments.
Md Tuhin Sheikh, PhD, Assistant Professor
Genomic epidemiology of RNA viruses drives precision public health
Dr. Matthew Scotch will present his latest research focusing on the integration of genomic epidemiology and public health informatics for the surveillance of RNA viruses, including influenza and SARS-CoV-2. His work, which involves monitoring viruses from patients, wildlife, and the environment, is highly relevant to CHS’s mission areas of precision health, data-driven health solutions, and the advancement of public health outcomes. By leveraging advanced genomic tools and data analytics, his research has significant potential for real-world application, including enhancing public health surveillance, prevention, and clinical treatment for infectious diseases with epidemic and pandemic potential.
Matthew Scotch, PhD
If it's not sitting, then is screen time the new smoking?
Digital solutions to disconnect from the digital world. Presenters: Dr. Chad Stecher, PhD and Dr. Matt Buman, PhD As sedentary lifestyles increase, sitting has been dubbed the "new smoking." But, screen time now consumes over half of the available leisure time for Americans and is more strongly linked with poor health outcomes compared to other sitting contexts (e.g., work). Should screen time be considered the new smoking? Drs. Buman and Stecher, both faculty in CHS, will present on the development and testing of StandUPTV, a digital health intervention to reduce sedentary screen time in adults.
Matthew Buman, PhD
Chad Stecher, PhD
Barriers to Implementing Value-Based Payment and Improving Population Health in the United States
Dr. Montalvo is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Movement Sciences in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. She has a PhD in Kinesiology from Penn State and a Master's in Public Health from the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on injury epidemiology and her current area of study is related to application of new technologies to understand trends in heat-related injury. Heat-related illness (HRI) is a leading cause of death and disability in youth athletes. Risk of HRI will continue to rise as climate change progresses. The burden will likely disproportionately impact athletes in communities of color, though evidence of racial disparities on HRI in youth athletes is lacking. This talk will address current epidemiological evidence of HRI in youth athletes, children more broadly, and policy implications, and will propose several potential solutions to address the problem.
William Riley, PhD
Kailey Love, MBA, MS
Prevention of Pediatric Heat-Related Illness
Dr. Montalvo is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Movement Sciences in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. She has a PhD in Kinesiology from Penn State and a Master's in Public Health from the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on injury epidemiology and her current area of study is related to application of new technologies to understand trends in heat-related injury. Heat-related illness (HRI) is a leading cause of death and disability in youth athletes. Risk of HRI will continue to rise as climate change progresses. The burden will likely disproportionately impact athletes in communities of color, though evidence of racial disparities on HRI in youth athletes is lacking. This talk will address current epidemiological evidence of HRI in youth athletes, children more broadly, and policy implications, and will propose several potential solutions to address the problem.
Alicia Montalvo, PhD, MPH
Sensorimotor Control Mechanisms and Applications to Human-Machine Interactions
Dr. Santello is professor and director of the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University. Over the past few decades, motor control research has provided significant insights into humans' ability to learn and execute movements. The dominant theoretical framework posits that humans can control movements based on an internal model of their body's dynamics. This framework, however, cannot account for a different class of movements: physical cooperation. When cooperating with a human partner, successful completion of a joint task must also consider predicting and reacting to the partner's actions. Dr Santello will give an overview of human-human physical interaction research and highlight applications to human-machine interactions
Marco Santello, PhD
Effortless Training of Attention and Self-Contro
YiYuan Tang, PhD, is a Professor of Health Neuroscience, Prevention Science, and Data Science, and the Director of the Health Neuroscience Collaboratory at the College of Health Solutions, ASU. Funded by the NIH, DoD, and private foundations, his research mainly focuses on the brain and body mechanisms of attention, self-control, emotion regulation, stress resilience, and decision-making related to whole person health, healthy behavior, habits, and lifestyles, and evidence-based interventions to improve human performance, prevent and ameliorate behavioral problems and mental disorders over the lifespan. He has published 10 books and over 360 peer-reviewed articles such as Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Trends in Cognitive Sciences. He is among the top 2% of the world's most cited scientists (Elsevier).
YiYuan Tang, PhD
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Promoting Equity in Maternal and Child Health for Underserved Communities
Ehiremen (Ehi) Azugbene is a Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar actively engaged with the Maternal and Child Health Translational Research Team (MCHTRT) at the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. Her research focus is on addressing the maternal healthcare needs of underserved populations, with an emphasis on refugee and immigrant communities. Her research encompasses various aspects of maternal and child health, including health literacy, health disparities, healthcare utilization, health policy, health services, and global health.
Ehiremen (Ehi) Adesua Azugbene PhD, MPH, CHES
Strategies Towards Healthier and More Livable Urban Environments
Dr. Ariane Middel is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence. Her research focuses on how urban form and design affect heat and human thermal exposure in cities. Dr. Middel has advanced urban climate science through applied and solutions-oriented research using innovative field methods such as MaRTy (a mobile human-biometeorological weather station), microclimate simulations, and human-centric modeling. Dr. Middel is the President of the International Association for Urban Climate (IAUC) and directs the SHaDE Lab at ASU, which brings together students from multidisciplinary backgrounds to develop creative solutions for urban climate challenges that confront our society. Dr. Middel's work lies at the intersection of climate and health and aims to develop local- to regional-scale heat interventions to improve the health and livability of urban populations.
Matt Huentleman, PhD
The Application of Web- and Mobile Laboratory-Based Research to Recruit and Study Large Cohorts
Two primary challenges facing various types of human research are scalability and population representation. In this presentation, I will highlight two distinct solutions to these challenges based on our studies of healthy brain aging. One approach will center on the utilization of internet-based participant recruitment through the MindCrowd study, which has been running for over ten years. This study has amassed cognitive testing data from approximately 500,000 participants worldwide, providing a large and diverse cohort for analysis. Another approach will emphasize the use of a low-field MRI-equipped mobile laboratory. This study, launched six months ago, has successfully recruited over 400 participants from rural Arizona zip codes. I will discuss the current scientific findings from each study and explore the impact these two different approaches have demonstrated on scalability and representation.
Matt Huentleman, PhD